Also during
the year I managed to find a lot of material on the Finnish codebreakers and
their work on the M-138-A strip cipher. Regarding the Carlson-Goldsberry
report the NSA’s FOIA office has managed to locate it but releasing it will
take time.

2). NKVD
5th Department codebreakers

No new
information has been published on the work and achievements of the Soviet
codebreakers except for some online articles in Russian websites. The article ‘О ВКЛАДЕ СОВЕТСКИХ КРИПТОГРАФОВ В ПОБЕДУ ПОД МОСКВОЙ’,
referenced in the book ‘Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of
Soviet Intelligence’, says
that in late 1942 the Soviet codebreakers analyzed the Enigma cipher
machine and developed ways of solving it. However their efforts failed in January 1943 due to German
security measures.

3). Referat
Vauck success

After
locating the reports of Referat 12 i was able to write the detailed essay Allied
agents codes and Referat 12. I’ve also requested the postwar interrogation
reports of Dr Wilhelm Vauck from the NSA. However locating and declassifying
them will take some time.

4). Forschungsamt
information

According to
the NSA’s FOIA office the Forschungsamt files are coming up for review.

5). German
Enigma investigations

The reports
of the German Army’s codebreakers on the Enigma are available from government
archives in the US and Germany. Unfortunately no one has read and commented on
them.

6). Japanese
Purple and Coral cipher machines

Regarding the
possibility of the Germans
solving the Japanese Purple cipher machine I haven’t found any new
information but in 2013 I had a
brief conversation with mr Otto Leiberich, who worked in the German cipher
department during the Cold War period. He told me that he had spoken with mr Cort
Rave about this case and he was able to give me some additional information.
I’ll write about this soon.

7). Soviet
diplomatic code

I’m satisfied
with the material
I’ve found but there is still the possibility that the Germans solved some
OTP traffic during WWII. Even if they did it is possible that the files were
destroyed during the war.

8). M-209
decoding device

In 2015 I
said ‘I have to say I’m still surprised
that this device has not received any attention from historians and/or the media!’ Since
then nothing has changed.

9). Unknown
unknowns

As Donald
Rumsfeld said ‘….. there are known
knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known
unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But
there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know…’.

Clearly there are
cases that researchers have completely missed. I’ve been able to identify one
such case and will be presenting it soon.